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Thanks for clearing that up, but isn't it confusing? RedHat pays a bunch of developers, I read a lot of stuff on "corporate identity" in their MLs. How much is Gnome influenced by RedHat and how much is it based on a few individuals like MkCann and jakub?

It's a bit confusing but only b/c RH is an open source company mostly driven by people who believe in the philosophy (the CEO is a good business man but I don't think he is a "believer"...not that it really matters since he understands how things work, in a practical sense).
I don't recall reading anything about corporate identity on the gnome mls, but they do talk about BRAND identity a good bit (especially allen). IMHO, they appear to be playing at being apple but without the vision. I know they, rightfully, admire apple's products but they don't seem to have learned the "correct" lessons. Apple makes simply products, but not TOO simple. They are actually, traditionally, quite powerful. That's why they are used by engineers, scientists, designers, and many other "makers". Gnome can never hope to go after that group (even though they could, IMHO) b/c they are focusing on the wrong areas.
As to how much they are influenced by RH, aside from the Gnome Classic extensions required for el7 I'd say very, very little.

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And that is unfortunate. I would also like to apologize for making a slightly smug assumption that you had never dealt with the design team. That was uncalled for.

Thank you for that.
I'll try to remember that you are one of the civilized ones
I really hope that fedora will ball up and deviate from upstream to better suit their audience (with the additional hope that gnome will eventually accept some of these changes).

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I especially criticized the Gnome-devs for talking about the corporate identity. And if you don't understand what an ad-hominem-argument is, you should sod off yourself, dude. And you got that right: Gnome IS a project, that's the point! We are discussing the corporate influence here, and when Gnome-devs start talking about a corporate identity, then this is something to criticize. Congratulations for finding that out!

Gnome really isn't a topic I enjoy talking about. We have a company _or_ a few individuals who messed things up badly and now we have a piece of shit which is unusable for many.
So please excuse me as I go back to work on software which sucks less while you kids find out who's fault it is now (great point of discussion!).

Have a nice day.

Reading comprehension problem? GNOME isn't a topic you want to talk about, yet you do so for ages. I asked you wtf you're on about with "corporate identity". I'll tell you a public fact: GNOME isn't a company.

And why I'm responding? You're trash talking me while being so obvious that you know shit all. E.g. "We have a company _or_ a few individuals who messed things up badly": you're talking about me, while you don't even freaking know GNOME isn't a company. Your utter ignorance is appalling.

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I've had personal contact with several members of the design team and a few GTK developers. Everyone is very much commited to providing a good overall experience, and it's not a few of the designers 'forcing' ideas on the developers, definitely not within the core modules and applications. There has been plenty of positive feedback on the core concepts of GNOME 3 and the progress that has been made, and GNOME is still getting a lot of adoption, despite the outspoken negative opinions of some user polls (directed at a very specific subset of Linux users, mind you).

I think the big misunderstanding is that some people expect the developers and designers that have worked so hard to actualize GNOME 3 to somehow go back on that work, despite the fact that they have brought many new users and great features to GNOME in the process. Even with the flexibility of extensions, even with a Classic Mode, and even with forks like Cinnamon providing users with different options, some people continually blame the community members that work on GNOME for 'ignoring users' simply because they can't do everything they're told when there are conflicting interests. It is the job of the designer not only to create a usable and useful interface that anticipates the needs of the user (whether explicitly recognized by the user or not), but to make difficult decisions when users state opposing desires. Especially in a community-built project that relies on its users to survive, it's a thankless role I don't envy. No matter what desktop environment you use, there will be people who disagree with its approach, so you need to go to something beyond hype and cynicism to really examine feedback and come up with plausible, rational solutions.

I wasn't originally convinced that the GNOME 3 design decisions made much sense, due to some ingrained habits that had no real logical basis aside from being cemented in interface design history. It's easy to assume that what you're used to is what's best, without reason. The fact of the matter is that the designers are trained to make these decisions correctly and improve on them- they have to take certain forms of feedback with a grain of salt. There is plenty of documentation explaining the rational basis behind GNOME's current design. There has also been work towards usability testing and plenty of meaningful responses to user feedback (much more than we had in the GNOME 2 era).

Please, try to put yourself in the shoes of these people and understand the challenges they face every day before assuming they are arrogant people with flawed assumptions of computer use. They've taken so many concerns into consideration beyond the minor quibbles that are brought up in these discussions. Of course, I would say read some of the design documents to get an understanding of what you disagree with, then get on IRC to level your concerns directly if you have some meaningful feedback. Most of the GNOME users I talk to regularly understand this, and many of us have had real conversations where changes were made due to sincere involvement. Don't take my word for who these people are when you can see it in their work.